CHAPTER TWO
COVIN
The woman who fell into my space straightened herself and sent me what she probably thought was a winning smile but fell shy of the mark by more than a country mile.
Not that any of that—including her still-flailing limbs—made her any less attractive. A slightly too-skinny frame peeked out from the edges of baggy jeans and way too much frizzy hair. She wore a plethora of looped, multicolored scarves over her puffy blue jacket that seemed too warm even for this climate and most certainly for the traipse up the tower stairs.
But it was her eyes that did it for me.
Even with her high cheeks flushed and pretty lips parted on a huff of a breath that might be a laugh, her eyes were by far the most expressive thing about her—and that was considering the mass of hair that frizzed about her like a previously undiscovered lifeform with an aura that mingled with her own.
Brown, liquid and swirling like pools I might fall into and never emerge.
The stuff dreams were made of. Or perhaps nightmares.
I pressed my lips together, willing my rage back that so frequently simmered beneath the surface now, desperate to burst free hence my self-induced seasonal hibernation, and released a controlled breath. When she didn’t appear willing to offer any further announcements I cleared my throat.
Pointedly.
“What are you doing in here?” I tried for manners.
“Well, clearly you’re not Buttercup,” she said, waving her hands far too much for a short sentence, her words edged in exasperation like her untimely appearance was my fault.
I raised both eyebrows. Perhaps she was as insane as she looked. Insanely pretty. I banished the thought as fast as it appeared. Not the time for that. The penny dropped.
“Ah, the cow.”
“Coo,” she muttered with a truly atrocious attempt at a Highland accent.
I closed my eyes, searching for her dialect in my mind, and came up with the answer way too close to home. “California?”
“Not bad.” she whistled, and the sound pierced my remaining active brain cells.
Where’s that bottle of whiskey I brought with me?
“I’m glad we established that. Now please, go away.”
“I was looking for easels.”
I opened my eyes and blinked at her. “Why would weasels live in a tower?”
“What are–?” She shook her head. “Why is there a dusty man with great tomes in a tower?”
“Do you always answer a question with a question?” I snapped, pushing shaking hands onto my knees to conceal the tremor that burst on.
“Jesus did.”
“What?” I stopped fidgeting and stared at her. Hopefully she thought I was an over-caffeinated academic.
She shrugged. “I mean, he seemed a good role model at the time.”
“That’s not what I– Christ.” I pinched the bridge of my nose.
“Yes, he went by that name too,” she added helpfully.
My fingers curled in my hair, stopping shy of yanking at the strands. “The invitation was to leave.” I freed up a few fingers to point at the door.
“Oh.” She looked around, ostensibly for easels over weasels, or perhaps the missing coo . “Are you here all season?”
“Season?”
“It’s Christmas soon.” Another sunny smile as unsuited to the climate and this place as she was graced me.
The level of brightness left me distinctly uncomfortable.
“It is.” I stopped short of making that a question, and turned it into a statement at the last minute.
“Yep.” She popped the ‘p’.
“Yes,” I echoed.
“Great. I’ll see you for breakfast.” She blessedly turned and headed for the door, shutting it behind her.
I stared at the space she had occupied a moment before, the room still echoing with the absence of her presence like a void had opened up behind her, sucking in all the energy of this place and depositing it in the place she had stood. All that, and I still had no idea who she was.
What sort of a spy are you, Covin Drysdale?
One more than a decade out of practice, apparently.
My confusion—not relief—was short lived as her head popped back around the edge of the door.
“What now,” I barked.
“Do you know how to milk a cow?” she asked.
“No!” I roared.
“Oh, good,” she said, relief evident in her tone. She ignored my ire, the fact I just yelled at a total stranger, gave me a finger wave and disappeared for a second time, leaving me alone.
Without her name. Again.
I returned to my dusty tomes as my mystery woman so eloquently put it, but my research didn’t fill my hours as it had in the days before her arrival at Witnot Castle. Nor did the fact I hadn’t given a thought to the blasted cow that was probably bursting at its udders by now as I had promised to milk the damned beast.
Giving up my papers as a bad job while the afternoon closed in I headed down to the kitchens with the hope of avoiding the castle’s newest occupant, to locate a coo, and hoped there weren’t any other unannounced visitors in the castle’s recent history in what was supposed to be a solo research trip.
Because I’d completely forgotten it was Christmas.
The cow hated me.
I’d chased it around the small stable for the better part of the last hour, covering my trousers in mud, straw and God alone knew what else, all because I refused to bend down and study the contents of the soil sullying the unsavable hems of my pants.
Gripping the battered pail that earned itself a few new dents in the last fifteen minutes, I planted the milking stool—I hoped that was the seat’s purpose—and placed the bucket beside it. Backing off with care, I held out my hands.
“Cow. You will do damage to your innards if you aren’t milked. I do not have the time nor the constitution to continue chasing you sober, nor do you want me yanking on your udders six sheets plus to the wind.” Outside the stables said gale picked up blasting us both with a fresh layer of sleet and sludge. I fixed the cow with a steady eye that promised no quarter. “So, please. For both my sanity and yours, will you do me the honor of allowing me to milk you?” I planted my behind carefully on the stool, set my hands on my knees, and waited.
The cow, short in stature but not in stubbornness shot me a coy look, tossed her head and trotted over, standing exactly where she needed to be.
Barely daring to breathe, I reached under the foreboding animal and gripped a teat with firm hands, prayed I didn’t hurt the beast and tugged. It took a few minutes, two kicks that upset the pail, but I managed to get a rhythm going. After a not too-short period, the bucket began to fill. Oddly enough the manual labor, after enough time bent over books and scratching my notes in margins in the tower locked away from the world and despite the weather, provided its own reward.
“That was impressive,” my crazy-haired lady whispered in my ear.
“Fuck me,” I shouted into the cow’s side. The animal, who took offence at being yelled at, kicked over my nearly full milk pail, and cantered off. Or loped.
Whatever cows did when cows were yelled at.
I swiveled on my stool and glared at my crazy lady with enough venom to level a small country.
She grinned back. “That was awesome. Do it again?”
Apparently I was losing my touch.
“For the third time, what the hell do you want apart from ruining my holiday?” My hand rose to pinch the bridge of my nose, but she batted my fingers away.
“Don’t do that. You should wash first. Bacteria,” she reproved me.
I stared at her as she berated me, my eyebrows hiked so far into my hairline I feared they might reside there forever. Righting the bucket I slapped the muddy, dented metal into her chest. “Tomorrow it’s your job. And for every other day you’re here.” Several things that shouldn’t have cracked as I rose and stalked away, managing not to grimace at the pain that reverberated through my joints from maintaining the too low position for someone my height.
That whiskey was destined for a short shelf life.
“You don’t want to do turn about?” she offered cheerily.
I pivoted on my heel, ready to snap back at her and found the woman cuddled up to the damn cow that ate something out of her hand, nuzzling to her middle. Without so much as another word, she hooked one leg around the stool, plopped down onto it, and started to milk the beast like she’d been doing it all her life.
“No thank you,” I muttered, giving both the cow and my co-castellan for the season my back.
“Enjoy your…books!” she called cheerfully.
The woman, not the cow. Though as I shoved my way through the castle’s back door, I realized that in this mad place, I couldn’t be entirely sure it wasn’t the cow that spoke to me after all.